Automaker Fear That Tesla's Half Baked Autopilot Will Claim First Major Accident

Apart from dieselgate, the big topic at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show is autonomous driving. Both Toyota and Nissan are showing off impressive autonomous technology. They are doing it quietly, without the chest pounding of a Elon Musk. Talk to automakers in Tokyo, and you will sense how worried they ware about motormouth Musk’s Autopilot rhetoric. They are not worried about Tesla’s tech. They are worried about a massive public and political blowback if and when an accident happens with an automated vehicle.
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TheSteve - 11/2/2015 12:25:44 PM

+1 Boost

Mr. Musk is outstanding at a number of things:
- Generating hype
- Securing government grants and other funding
- Deflecting and blaming when someone says something negative about him, his company, or his products
- Getting wealthy
- Bleeding red ink

Google has massive resources. They're deeply into autonomous car research and they have yet to sell an autonomous car. Meanwhile, Tesla has turned on the autonomous functionality, and YouTube already has videos of Tesla owners jumping into intervene to correct the system's error. A recent video showed a Tesla veering into oncoming traffic, a move that averted only by an attentive driver who was right on the ball to jump in a steer away from the oncoming vehicle.

I'd put my money on:
- Tesla being amongst the earliest production autonomous cars to get into a serious accident involving personal injuries
- Musk deflecting and blaming something other than his car

vdiv - 11/2/2015 2:53:54 PM

+2 Boost

Not to split hairs but Autopilot is not autonomous driving, it is a collection of assistive features such as dynamic cruise control, auto steer, auto lane change, emergency brake, auto park, etc that other car makers already have. The car still requires the active attention from the driver.

Everything that Toyota has to say about Tesla, such as this FUD, should be taken with a giant boulder of salt as Tesla is a significant threat to Toyota's hybrid/hydrogen fuel cell strategy (boondoggle).